China and Japan in Our University Curricula

China and Japan in Our University Curricula

China and Japan in Our University Curricula

Excerpt

The aim of the Institute of Pacific Relations is to promote among the peoples bordering on the Pacific Ocean the study of their mutual interests. In order to learn the part which it must play in the discharge of the Institute's total task, the American Council must discover the extent to which the public schools, the universities, the press, the libraries, the museums, the commercial organizations, and the Government itself are enabling our people to study their relationships to the peoples across the Pacific. It is safe to make a preliminary assumption that our facilities for such study are meager. Our school children learn a little of Europe. They learn less of Asia. The press carries more and more news of Europe, but because of governmental difficulties our Oriental news is still negligible. How penurious we have been in providing the officers of our Government with adequate facilities for the study of our relations with the other peoples of the world is revealed in the Foreign Policy Association's recent study of our own State Department.

In the matter of language study alone, California recently afforded an instance of the striking contrast between the growing interest of that state in the Orient and the language facilities provided. A question addressed to some of the leading educators of the state revealed that for her citizens California provides instruction in French at four hundred centers but in the Chinese and Japanese languages at only two public institutions. Even with this record, California remains a banner state in the teaching of Far Eastern languages.

Preliminary inquiries by Colonel Arthur Woods and later by Professor Kenneth S. Latourette appeared to indicate that our colleges and universities were almost as backward as the . . .